TENNIS in DEPTH.

John Isner made a winning return to the men’s tour with a hard-fought triumph against Gilles Muller at the Atlanta Tennis Championships.

Isner wrote himself into tennis folklore at SW19 last month by defeating Frenchman Nicolas Mahut in an 11-hour, 183-game epic, and by any other yardstick would have considered his three-set victory against Luxembourg qualifier Muller a decent workout.

The giant American demonstrated the fighting spirit that served him so well in the first-round encounter at the All England Club by saving match points in both the second and third sets before prevailing 4-6 7-6 (8/6) 7-6 (9/7).

The 6ft 9in Isner fired 33 aces to 29 from Muller in a big-hitting encounter, and the former University of Georgia student admitted he was indebted to the partisan crowd for getting him across the line despite failing to break his opponent’s serve.

“The match was pretty ugly to be honest, but I was proud how I competed and the crowd helped in that regard,” said Isner, who is seeded second for this event and was handed a bye in the first round.

“I was down break points a couple of times in the second set – they were kind of baby match points with the way he was serving.”

He added: “I hadn’t seen a live ball in quite some time and Gilles was never going to give me rhythm with his lefty serve.

“I felt I was shedding the rust off in the second and third sets. I will only keep getting better. As a tennis player you need a lot of matches to play your best.

“This was one of the biggest wins of the year.”

Fellow Americans Michael Russell, Taylor Dent and Mardy Fish also advanced to the quarter-finals with second-round wins.

Russell set up a last-eight clash with Isner by defeating German Rainer Schuettler 1-6 6-2 7-5, while Dent progressed by upsetting fourth-seeded Argentinian Horacio Zeballos 4-6 6-2 6-0.

Dent will next meet Fish after the sixth seeded dispatched another American, Robby Ginepri, 6-1 7-5.

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When the glare of the sun got a little too much, the 22-year-old student Kim Sears helped take the heat off her boyfriend, lovingly rubbing some sun lotion on his back.

The pair have only recently rekindled their relationship after splitting up in November.

But in the Atlantis resort, they lay contentedly side by side on sunloungers, engrossed in their books and games like a couple well used to each others’ company.

An onlooker said: ‘They spent about two-and-a-half hours by the pool, she was reading her book and he spent most of that playing on his Nintendo DS.

‘They looked very relaxed. I think they were just enjoying a chill-out weekend.’

The Scot is thought to have flown to the resort for a short stay before returning to Miami, where he has an apartment, to continue his preparations for the U.S. Open, which begins next month.

And even poolside, it seems that the tournament was never far from his mind.

The British No 1 honed his competitive tendencies on his Nintendo – and also spent more than two hours training in the gym during their visit.

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Tournament directors hope that Ana Ivanovic’s inclusion in their events will help boost their gate revenues, and for this reason alone she has been granted wildcards into 3 US Open Series events. Depending upon the luck of the draw she could easily be gone after just one match, which would do nothing for her confidence, push her further down the rankings, and put her future in jeopardy.

She returns to action at the Bank of the West Classic, which begins in Stanford on Monday. Ana entered the tournament late following her Wimbledon exit and was thus granted a wild card for an event that she has not before played.

From Stanford Ana will head south to the Mercury Insurance Open in San Diego, where she has also been granted a wild cad. She has played the tournament once before, in 2006 when she reached the third round on her way to winning the US Open Series.

 Ana’s third event of the US hard court summer will be the Western & Southern Financial Group Women’s Open in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is one place off direct entry into the main draw, but her participation has been guaranteed by the offer of a wild card if necessary.

 Ana, who won the Rogers Cup in 2006 as an 18-year-old, has had her request for a wild card in Montreal declined, and so she would have to play qualifying in order to compete in Canada – her ability to do so dependent on her results in Cincinnati during 9-15 August.

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Top seed Jelena Jankovic made it safely through to the second round of the Banka Koper Slovenia Open in Portoroz with a 6-3 6-3 victory over Serbian youngster Bojana Jovanovski.

But second seed Petra Kvitova was brought back to earth with a bump in her first match since her storming run to the Wimbledon semi-finals. The young Czech was beaten 7-5 6-2 by Switzerland’s Stefanie Voegele.

There were no such problems for her fellow high seeds, with third seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova easing past Alberta Brianti 7-5 6-1, and fourth seed and last year’s beaten finalist Sara Errani downing qualifier Anna Tatishvili 7-6 (7/1) 6-4.

Johanna Larsson was a surprise 7-6 (7/1) 6-2 winner over eighth seed and fellow Swede Sofia Arvidsson, but seventh seed Polona Hercog progressed with a 6-3 6-3 win over qualifier Elena Bovina.

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Top seed and defending champion Andrea Petkovic took just 73 minutes to polish off Czech opponent Iveta Benesova and get the defence of her Nurnberger Gasteinladies title in Bad Gastein off to a winning start.

Petkovic made her big breakthrough at the same event last season and has improved steadily since, making her far too strong for Benesova, whose weak serve let her down.

Second seed Timea Bacsinszky also breezed through with a 6-1 6-2 win over Germany’s Anna-Lena Groenefeld, while fourth seed Julia Goerges defeated Czech Klara Zakopalova 6-2 5-7 6-1.

In a Czech family affair, sixth seed and last week’s Prague finalist Barbora Zahlavova Strycova was beaten 7-5 6-3 by Sandra Zahlavova – who is the cousin of Strycova’s husband.

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On Monday, tour spokesman Andrew Walker said Williams is questionable for the final Grand Slam of the year. Williams’ return to the Open has been widely anticipated because of her tumultuous semifinal loss there last year, when she threw a tirade at a line judge at the end of a match against Kim Clijsters and was fined a record $82,500.

The admitted drama-queen cut the bottom of her foot and needed stitches.

Ranked No. 1, Williams won her fourth Wimbledon crown and 13th major title July 3. The injury occurred shortly thereafter in Europe and at first was not believed to be serious.

After hurting her foot, Williams played in an exhibition in Brussels on July 8 against Clijsters before a world-record tennis crowd of 35,681.

Clijsters said she knew before the exhibition that Williams was hurt pretty seriously.

“I saw her before we started but she didn’t go into how it happened,” Clijsters said. “I told her how much I admired her for coming out there. A lot of players in her situation wouldn’t have done it.”

Williams subsequently withdrew from upcoming tournaments in Istanbul, Cincinnati and Montreal. The last of those, at Montreal, begins Aug. 16, and the U.S. Open starts Aug. 30.

“You want the best players to be out there, especially at the U.S. Open,” Clijsters said. “It would be sad not to have Serena there.”

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Defending champion Nikolay Davydenko will open his campaign in round two against Frenchman Florent Serra, who beat Evgeny Korolev 7-6 (9/7) 6-3. Other winners included Jarkko Nieminen, Jeremy Chardy and Fabio Fognini.

Davydenko’s defence has already got a little easier with the news number two seed David Ferrer has withdrawn with a right shoulder injury, and fourth seed Gael Monfils is also out with an ankle problem.

Last year’s runner-up Paul-Henri Mathieu crashed out in the first round of the German Open in Hamburg when he fell in three sets to the Spanish qualifier Pere Riba.

His 1-6 6-0 6-3 defeat was Mathieu’s eighth first-round loss in his last nine tournaments and means the former world number 12 is destined to slide further outside the world’s top 50.

Home favourite Florian Mayer advanced with a 6-4 6-1 win over Uruguay’s Pablo Cuevas but elsewhere there was disappointment as Andreas Beck, Mischa Zverev, Simon Greul and Bjorn Phau all lost.

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This years Rogers Cup will be played in Montreal and Toronto, the women in Montreal and the men in Toronto. It is a new format for 2010, and one that will be adopted as the norm with the two tours alternating between the two cities each season.

The events have attracted most of the top players, and the prize money reflects how serious both the Men and Women players have become about this Canadian event. It is a top tier event on both tour calendars.

As with most events the Tournament Director holds a few places open for wild card entries which are filled as the opening date approaches. The host country will give wild cards to ‘home grown’ players or others who may be coming back from injury. Otherwise the entrants are established based on their current WTA or ATP rakings.

In the case of Ana Ivanovic, who won 3 years ago, she has not received a wildcard and will only make the main draw if she is successful in the qualifying rounds. She is ranked #65,(the field is a 64 person draw) and is in a well publicised slump. Having to qualify, which means she will have to play 3 or 4 matches to reach the main draw, may be the best news for her and her game. She has played only a handful of competitive sets of tennis in the past 3 months, and has shown that she is not mtach ready as she has lost in the early rounds of her most recent events.

There is always the chance that a player in the main draw will pull out, and Ivanovic as the top seed in the qualifying rounds could be elevated to the main draw.

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